Did We Overhype USB Audio And Overlook Possible Pitfalls?

[davide256]

If you had asked me 6 months ago after I had just acquired the Regen, and was using with basic streamers, I would have said hell yes, USB is the way to go for digital connection solution. But now with the Aries mini, I much prefer the AQ Diamond coax for DAC connection as equal in depth of detail and simpler than asynch USB .

[davide256]

Do you know if this coax connection can be used for DSD?

 

As far as I know coax is PCM only, DSD would need to transcode to PCM and I end up playing DSD from the mini DAC section. I'd like to believe that DSD signal bandwidths will eventually drive audio to use better fiber optical transceiver solution as optics are inherently more linear and error free than EM signal transmission solutions like coax and USB. In telecom we use fiber optic pairs wherever possible today for all terrestrial circuits because of those reasons, with bandwidths up to 100Gbps